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On top of the disaster that had been his second deployment, this news had simply numbed him, somehow removing personal emotion from his life. He knew this didn’t show, and he had continued to be a competent—probably more than competent—caring doctor, a cheerful companion in the officers’ mess and a dutiful son to both his parents and whichever spouses they happened to have in their lives at the time.
He’d always been reasonably sure that his parents’ divorce, when he was seven, hadn’t particularly affected him. He’d seen both regularly, lived with both at various times, got on well with his half-siblings, and had even helped them, at different times, when their particular set of parents had divorced. Walking the coastal path, he’d had time to reflect and had realised that perhaps it had been back then that he’d learned to shut his emotions away—tuck them into something like a memory box and get on with his life.
Had this shut him away, prevented him from seeing and understanding what had probably been Lauren’s very real fear that first time he’d been sent abroad?
She’d contacted him, Lauren, when she’d heard he was back this time—an email to which he hadn’t replied.
He’d wondered if the thrills she’d spoken of had palled, but found he didn’t want to know—definitely didn’t want to find out. In fact, their brief courtship and three-year marriage seemed more like some fiction he’d read long ago than actual reality.
A dream—or maybe a nightmare...
Not wanting his thoughts to slide back into the past where there were memories far worse than that particular nightmare, he shut the lid on his memory box and turned his thoughts to what lay ahead.
Inevitably, to the golden girl—woman—who’d popped into his life like a genie from a bottle, then jogged right back out again.
She must live in Wetherby, he realised, but the seaside town and surrounding area had a population of close to ten thousand, probably double that in holiday time.
It was hardly likely they’d run into each other...
And he’d be far too busy getting used to his new position, getting to know his colleagues and learning his way around the hospital and town to be dallying with some golden sprite.
Besides which, she had a child to get ready for school so was probably married, although he had checked and she didn’t wear a ring.
Not that people did these days, not all the time, and there were plenty of couples who never married, and women, and men, too, he supposed, who had a child but weren’t necessarily in a relationship.
But she had a child, and even if she wasn’t partnered, he was reasonably certain that women with children would—and should—be looking for commitment, for security, in a relationship.
Not that he did relationships.
He was more into dallying, and since he’d been a single man again, the only dalliances he’d had were with women who felt as he did, women who were happy with a mutually enjoyable affair without any expectation of commitment on either side.
The path had wound its way to the top of a small rise and he halted, more to stop his rambling, idiotic thoughts than to look at the view.
But the view was worth looking at, the restless ocean stretching out to the horizon, blue and green in places, fringed with white where the surf curled before rolling up the beach.
Off the next headland he could see surfers sitting on their boards, waiting for the next good wave, and beyond that what must be the outskirts of the town.
Wetherby!
CHAPTER TWO
THE KITCHEN TABLE at the Halliday house could have seated twenty people quite comfortably, but Izzy and her sister Lila were under orders to set it for eight.
‘I thought it was just us—how did we get to eight?’ Izzy asked, as she obediently laid placemats while Lila added cutlery.
‘Uncle Marty’s coming and he’ll probably have a new girlfriend,’ Nikki, who was arranging a bowl of flowers for the centre of the table, volunteered.
‘But that’s you and me, two, and Lila, Hallie and Pop, five, then Marty and presumably his latest flirt, that’s seven.’
‘Plus the new doctor from the hospital. As chairman of the hospital board it seemed only right I get to know him,’ the woman her foster children all called Hallie explained.
‘She’s matchmaking again,’ Lila whispered to Izzy.
‘Hopefully for you, not me,’ Izzy retorted.
‘But Lila doesn’t live here,’ Nikki pointed out. ‘And, anyway, Mum, he might be The One.’
Izzy groaned. Thirteen-year-olds—nearly thirteen-year-olds—shouldn’t be acting as marriage managers for their mothers!
‘Now, don’t start that again. I am perfectly happy with my single state, besides which he’s the new doc and I’ll be working with him, and while some people seem to manage to combine their work and social lives, it’s always been a disaster for me.’
‘It was only a disaster once,’ Hallie reminded her, ‘and that was probably my fault. He seemed like such a nice man when the board interviewed him. How was I to know he had two ex-wives he didn’t happen to mention?’
‘Two ex-wives and a jealous lover who damned near shot our Izzy.’
They all turned towards the back door and chorused Marty’s name as he spoke. Nikki was first into his arms for a hug.
But Izzy hung back, shuddering at the memory of that ill-fated relationship, only looking up when Marty added, ‘Okay, I’m home and it’s great to see you all but just stand back, girls, because I found this bloke out in the garden, looking a little lost, and apparently he’s come for dinner. Hallie’s latest stray, I’d say, the new doc in town. Says his name’s Mac.’
Izzy could feel her face heating while her body went stiff with shock. A long drawn out no-o-o-o was screaming somewhere inside her, while her hitherto reliable heart was beating out a little tattoo that had more to do with how the stranger looked than who he was.
Clean-shaven, with his long shaggy hair trimmed and slicked neatly back, his blue eyes framed by dark arched brows, he was possibly the most attractive man she’d ever seen.
Any woman’s body would react to him, she told herself, glancing at Lila to see if she was similarly struck.
But, no, her beautiful, dark-haired, doe-eyed sister was shaking hands with the man called Mac and asking where he’d come from, where he’d trained, doctor-to-doctor questions.
Not that Mac had time to answer them, for Hallie had taken charge and was introducing him to the family.
‘Marty you’ve met—he doesn’t live here, just arrives from time to time, though usually not alone...’
Hallie frowned and looked around as if realising for the first time that Marty hadn’t brought a woman.
‘I took Cindy straight upstairs,’ he explained. ‘She wanted a shower before dinner, then I went out to see Pop in the shed and met Mac on the way back.’
‘Ah,’ Hallie said, nodding as if the world was now back in its rightful place. ‘So, Mac—you do like to be called Mac, don’t you? Isn’t that what you said at the interview?’
The poor bewildered man nodded, and before Hallie could go off on another tangent—something they were all only too used to—Marty stepped in.
‘Mac, the smallest of the women in the room is Nikki, and the redhead cowering in the corner is her mother, Izzy. It’s not your fault that the last hospital director had a mad ex-lover who tried to shoot Izzy.’
Marty waved his arm.
‘Come on over, Iz, and say hello to your new boss.’
‘We’ve already met,’ Izzy said bluntly, her anger at Marty for singling her out overcoming all her weird reactions to Mac.
‘And I’m Lila.’
Bless her! She’d read the tension in the room, had probably felt it emanating in waves from Izzy, and had stepped in to defuse things.
Now she was doing doctor talk again with the newcomer, smoothing over the earlier awkwardness and giving Izzy time to recover.
* * *
Mac tried to make sense of the place and people around him. He’d been directed to walk up the hill from the hospital and the only place on the hill was a big, old, stone-built building that looked as if it could house the hospital as well as all the staff.
He’d walked around it, wondering if the chairman of the hospital board might have a real house hidden somewhere behind it, and had ended up in a huge vegetable garden.
The man called Marty had rescued him, leading him into the old building through a cave-like back entrance and directly into a kitchen where, amidst what seemed like a dozen chattering women, stood his sprite. She had clothes on now, stretch jeans that hugged her legs and lower body and a diminutive top that showed a flash of golden skin at her waist when she moved.
Mrs Halliday he recognised, and the young girl with long golden-brown hair—okay, that was the daughter—while the real beauty of the room, the exotic dark-haired, black-eyed Lila, was finding it hard to hold his attention so his replies to her questions were vague and disjointed.
The sprite rescued him.
‘This is the man I was telling you about,’ she said to the room at large. ‘The man who helped me with the porpoise.’
After which she finally turned her attention to him.
‘Sorry about the chaos here tonight, Mac, but with—’
‘With your sister up from Sydney, and your brother might be home...yes, I know,’ he teased.
He saw the colour rise in her cheeks, but the flash of fire in her eyes suggested anger rather than embarrassment.
Bloody man! Izzy muttered inwardly. Now the whole family was looking at her.
Waiting for her famous temper to flare up?
No way! She would not react to this man’s teasing. Bad enough her body was reacting to his presence, sending messages along her nerves and excitement through her blood. If this kept up she’d have to leave—town, that is—given that a distracted nurse was no help to anyone.
But Nikki—school...
Pop saved her from total, and quite ridiculous, panic by appearing through the kitchen door with a long, and remarkably dangerous-looking spear in his hand.
It stopped both the conversation and the sizzle in her blood.
‘This’s the best I can do, Nik,’ he said, passing the lethal weapon to Izzy’s daughter. ‘I don’t know if the aboriginals in this area made ceremonial markings on their spears but old Dan at the caravan park will know. You can ask him, and he’ll show you what it needs.’
‘Put that away right now!’ Izzy ordered as Nikki began to caper around the room, flourishing the spear dangerously close to several humans.
Nikki disappeared, Hallie introduced Mac to Pop, she and Lila finished setting the table, and peace reigned, if only momentarily, in the Halliday kitchen.
Pop was explaining to Mac the project Nikki would be doing when school resumed, and why she needed a spear.
‘I’ve made so much stuff for so many kids over the years,’ he added. ‘Izzy, was it you who was the robot? That was probably my most ingenious design, although I did go through a lot of aluminium foil.’
Any minute now he was going to dig out the old photos and she’d be squirming with embarrassment all night!
‘Okay, dinner is ready.’
Hallie saved the day this time. She set the roasted leg of lamb on the table and handed Pop the carving knife and fork, Lila brought over dishes filled with crisply roasted potatoes and sticky baked pumpkin, while Izzy did her bit, taking the jugs of gravy from the warming drawer in the big oven and setting them on the table.
‘Right!’ Hallie said. ‘Guest of honour—that’s you, Mac—at the head of the table. Izzy, you’ll be working with him so you might as well get to know a bit about him. You sit on one side and Lila on the other, and no descriptions of operations of any sort, please, Lila. Pop, you sit next to Lila, and then Nikki, and on the other side Marty and Cindy, and I’ll sit at the end because—’
‘Because you have to get up and down to get things,’ the family chorused, and Izzy began to relax.
This was home, this was family, this was where she was safe, so who cared if her body found Mac whoever he was—did he have a last name?—attractive? Of course she’d felt attraction before—although not for quite a while, now she thought about it.
‘Are you going to sit?’
Heat crept up her neck and with her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, the wretched man would see it! How was she to know he’d hold her chair for her?
She thumped down in the seat, too quickly for him to guide it into place, pulled it in herself and turned to offer a brusque thank you. She met the blue of his eyes and felt herself drowning.
This wasn’t attraction, this was madness.
‘So, why Wetherby?’
Lila saved her again, asking the question that had been in Izzy’s mind, only hers had been phrased more as ‘Why the hell Wetherby?’.
Now he was smiling at Lila—well, what man didn’t smile at Lila?—and the kind of dark voice she remembered from the beach was explaining in short, fairly innocuous sound bites: army doctor, Middle East on and off over the last few years—
‘—so when I decided to get out of the service I looked for somewhere green, and close to the surf, yet small enough to be peaceful.’
‘Well, it’s certainly that—I’m guessing a month here and you’ll be bored to tears,’ Cindy told him.
‘Hey, Cindy, this is my home!’ Marty protested.
‘And this is only the second time you’ve been here, Cindy, and then only for a night,’ Nikki pointed out.
‘Are all small-town people as defensive as Wetherbyans?’ Mac murmured to Izzy, who felt the heat of his body radiating towards her and the breath of his words brush against her skin so all she could do was look blankly at him.
‘Of course,’ Lila said briskly, and although she’d once again saved the day, she was also studying Izzy closely. Probably trying to work out what was happening.
As if I know, Izzy thought desperately, passing the potatoes to their guest, while Lila piled slices of meat from the platter Pop had filled onto Mac’s plate.
Mac took the offerings of vegetables as they arrived and passed them on, poured gravy on his meat, and when his hostess picked up her knife and fork, he began to eat.
He tried to make sense of this family—anything to forget the woman by his side and the effect she was having on him. But how big, blond, blue-eyed Marty could be related to the beautiful Lila, let alone the petite redhead by his side, was beyond him.
‘We’re foster kids.’
He wasn’t sure whether he was more surprised by Izzy speaking to him or the fact that she’d read his thoughts.
‘All of you?’
‘Oh, yes, and there’s heaps more of us. It was a nunnery, you see, and Pop bought it for a song when he and Hallie married, and they intended filling it with their own kids, but that didn’t happen so they went out and found the strays that careless parents leave behind, or kids whose parents died, in Lila’s case. And they gave us all unquestioning love, and stability, and the confidence to be anything we wanted to be. But more than that, they gave us the security of a home, a family.’
‘It’s true,’ Lila said, nodding from his other side.
‘And it’s been the best thing that happened in all of our lives,’ Marty put in, although Hallie was telling them to hush, it was nothing anyone else wouldn’t have done.
But for some reason Mac’s thoughts had stopped earlier in the conversation so although he’d heard the rest, and been impressed, the question that came out was, ‘A nunnery?’
How could these beautiful women be living in a nunnery? Except it wasn’t a nunnery, of course it wasn’t, it was just that his brain wasn’t working too well. There was nothing immodest about the sprite’s clothing, but from where he was sitting he could see the tops of the soft roundness of her breasts, and blood that should have been feeding his brain was elsewhere.
‘It was cheap,’ the man they all called Pop offered. ‘And not that hard to knock two or three of the little cells together into decent-sized bedrooms.’
‘You’re a carpenter? Builder?’
Pop smiled and shook his head.
‘Truckie—mainly long haul. I’ve taught all the kids to drive trucks.’
‘I’m learning now,’ Nikki announced, adding, rather to Mac’s relief, ‘Though only in the paddocks behind the house at the moment.’
The talk turned to the animals kept in the paddocks—did Mac ride? That was Nikki. Hallie mentioned the vegetable garden—‘Feel free to help yourself to any vegetable...we always have far too many!’—and with the simple, delicious meal, and the general chat, Mac found himself relaxing in the midst of this strange family.
‘You’ve family yourself, Mac?’ Pop asked.
‘Parents, of course,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t see much of them. The army, you know—you never know from one day to the next where you’ll be.’
He didn’t add that their regular divorces and remarriages had dulled any filial emotion he’d ever felt for them.
‘Married?’
This time the question came from the beautiful Lila and he didn’t miss the wink she sent to Izzy.
Best to get that sorted once and for all, and quickly.
‘Was once,’ he replied, forcing himself to speak normally, although what felt like a very unsubtle third degree had his temper rising.
‘And once was more than enough,’ he added, to underline the point.
He glanced at Izzy, who was blushing furiously, and realised the questions weren’t so much for him but to tease her.
Marty put a stop to it.
‘Enough!’ he said, directing the word at Lila. ‘Pop asked a normal, everyday question, but all you’re doing, Lila, is teasing Izzy.’
He turned to Mac.
‘Izzy had an unfortunate experience with a doctor we had here a few years ago and it’s become a bit of a family joke.’
The shrill tone of a mobile phone broke up the conversation, and it was Marty who pulled one from his pocket, glancing at it and moving away.
‘Work. I’ll probably have to go,’ he explained as he moved into a small room off the kitchen.
‘Marty’s a pilot on the rescue helicopter,’ Lila explained, as the whole family turned anxious eyes towards the small room.
He returned briskly, grabbing a jacket from the back of his chair.
‘Got to go! Cindy, you coming or staying? If you’re coming there’s no time to get your stuff.’
Cindy, too, pushed back her chair.
‘Coming,’ she said.
The pair had barely left the room when another mobile sounded, and, having been free of its tyranny for three weeks, it took Mac a moment to realise it was his.
He glanced at the message on the screen before he, too, stood up.
‘Looks like I’m starting work early. I’m sorry, Mrs Halliday. The meal, what I managed to eat of it, was wonderful.’
‘Wait, I’ll come with you,’ the sprite announced.
‘I know the way.’
He didn’t really snap, it just came out a bit sharp, images of the tops of her soft breasts still lingering in his head.
‘Sure, but you only arrived in town this morning so I doubt you know your way around the hospital. Hallie might have given you the basic tour, but if it’s an emergency—and it will be if Marty’s flying someone in—then you need the best help you can get, and that’s me.’
She paused, then added with a teasing smile, ‘So, lucky you!’
She couldn’t possibly have known what he was thinking—not possibly, but it was obvious she intended coming with him as she rushed around the table kissing Hallie, Pop, Nikki and Lila, before linking her arm through his and practically dragging him out the door.
Escaping?
It certainly seemed that way as she led him headlong down the hill to the small hospital.
‘But aren’t you just off night duty?’
Good, he’d not only remembered something she’d said this morning, but had also managed a question, so his brain must be back in gear.
‘Yes, but in case you didn’t notice there was a certain amount of conspiracy stuff going on around that table tonight.’
‘Conspiracy?’
He didn’t want to admit he’d been more than slightly distracted by his neighbour at the table.
‘Never mind,’ Izzy said. ‘Silly family stuff! I was just glad to get away.’
She moved a little further from him now she had him out of the house.
Sitting next to him, conscious of every movement of his body, had been torture, especially since she’d noticed the silky hairs on his forearms.
Dark, silky hairs...
Mesmerising dark silky hairs...
She shook her head, glad of the darkness so he didn’t see her shaking loose her thoughts.
They were going to work and this was actually a good opportunity to see if she could detach herself from the idiotic attraction and concentrate solely on whatever they had to get done.
Never in her twenty-six years with the Hallidays had she been diverted from the sheer gluttonous enjoyment of one of Hallie’s roast dinners, yet there she’d been, her fork toying with a piece of pumpkin as she’d wondered if his arms would feel as silky as they looked.
‘But you have just come off night duty?’ Mac asked, successfully getting her mind off silky hairs—though only just...
‘Yes, but I’ve had a good sleep today. It’s why I jog. The steady pace seems to get rid of any leftover work tension and I can sleep like a baby.’
‘Some babies don’t sleep all that well,’ Mac muttered.
What babies did he know?
Not that it mattered...
‘We can go in this way,’ she told him, leading him to the kitchen door at the rear of the building. ‘We’ve only eleven patients at the moment with another seven in the nursing home at the back, so there’ll be two registered nurses and two aides on duty in the main hospital, with another RN on call. Actually, there should be one of the local GPs on call, but there’s a wedding...’
She led him down a short corridor, waving to a woman sitting at a curved desk in a room to the left.
‘That’s Abby,’ she told him. ‘Abby, Mac, Mac, Abby.’
‘Good thing you had your phone on,’ Abby told him. ‘I wouldn’t have known where to find you otherwise. I know you haven’t officially started work but there’s been an RTA on the highway, helicopter will bring in one patient for stabilisation and onward transport, and there are two ambulances also on the way.’
A patient requiring stabilisation was a tough introduction, but Mac was intrigued.
‘And how do you get this information? Know to be prepared?’
He’d asked the question into the air between her and Abby, so Izzy answered him.
‘First on scene is almost always police. They radio for ambulance support, a paramedic with the ambulance team assesses the injured and organises everything until the patients are safely removed.’
‘He can order a helicopter?’ Mac asked.
‘Providing one can land,’ Izzy responded. ‘And Marty can land just about anywhere. Roads are great if they’re flat and straight, but around here it’s been dairy country since for ever, and there are fields close to the roads even in the hills.’
Izzy was leading him towards the large room that was their ‘emergency department’, as she explained. The room had a desk, curtains that could be drawn to allow privacy for patients and on the far side, three small rooms.
‘The first one is the resus room,’ Izzy told him. ‘Next to it is a quiet room for mental health patients who sometimes find other people disconcerting, then a kind of all-purpose room, used for everything from resus to upset kids, to talking quietly to relatives when necessary.’
Mac heard a hitch in her voice and knew that talking to relatives—usually with grim news—wasn’t one of her favourite things. In a small town, a death would probably be someone she knew...
He wanted to touch her shoulder, say he was sorry, but why?
An excuse to touch her?
To feel that golden skin?
Fortunately, while totally irrational and unmedical thoughts flashed through his mind he heard the whup, whup, whup of the helicopter.